midnight justwrite

Sometimes my stomach remembers things my mind can't. It aches, and when I look down, it seems to be a person separate from myself. I tape photographs of birds to my walls. Their wings are spread wide and I wish I didn't know about the people who measure them, who clip them, who tear them from the sky. I think I used to know the taste of clouds. My skin remembers droplets and wind, but my tongue has no words left. My lips form silent syllables, then give up, parted slightly, sucking in warm air. You tell me I look like I've lost weight, but really my feathers are gone. The soft down on my chest, the smooth wings beneath my arms, measured and torn away. You think I've lost weight, but I feel heavier than ever, my chest full of rocks with so many names carved into them, names that I believe one minute and then are so wrong I want to reach down into my stomach and pull them up through my throat, hurl them into the ocean and watch these letters sink beneath the waves. But my stomach is too loud. When my fingers are close to it, they hear these memories and bring them up to my eyes, my lips, my silent tongue. So I clench my fists and swallow more stones, my face pointed skyward, searching the air for feathers heading toward the clouds.